Dear Dom
by StraightTalking
Summary: What if Letty wrote a letter to Dom before she died in fast and furious? And Dom read that letter... Dom's POV. One shot. Contains spoilers.


**Dom's POV**

Letty had been dead for a week when I finally got a few silent moments alone in LA to grieve. I stood by the previously wrecked Charger and admired her dedication and skill. It was almost finished. Now converted to electronic fuel ejection, it was more modern than it ever had been. A notebook which lay on the driver's seat contained a list of parts. It was meticulously filled out and detailed with the make, model and sort number of every single part for the Charger. Everything right down to the colour of the paintwork was recorded. The dealers Letty had bought the parts from was written down along with phone numbers. In the garage she had always run a tight ship detailing every little thing. This book was specific to the Charger and was identical to the one she kept for her Plymouth. It was a little obsessive maybe but it was always useful. While I struggled for names and numbers, Letty pulled out her notebook and retrieved a number. It was organised.

I climbed into the Charger and lifted our necklace from around the rear view mirror which I'd last seen in the DR and slipped it on. For a few seconds I sat in the drivers seat that not that long ago Letty would have been sat in fixing the car up. It struck me to look around for something Letty would have left behind. Anything of hers that I could have. Something of Letty's.

Reaching into the glove compartment I felt the crinkle of an envelope and I slowly pulled it from the compartment my fingers trembling. It was what I'd wanted but now I held it I wasn't sure. Whatever was in this envelope was something Letty had wanted me to have. As usual she was prepared for the worst.

For a long moment I held it, my eyes running over her writing. Her beautiful writing. I ran my little finger over the cursive writing that was my name, **_Dominic Toretto_**. I know no one would have ever expected it but Letty had oddly girly handwriting. It was beautiful, all curves and no angles so unlike the sharp character of Letty. Her rough edges always led me to believe she'd have scrawling writing but actually her writing was soft and flowing in a way Letty rarely was.

I drew in one sharp, shaking breath and broke the seal with care using my thumb to crack it open. I didn't want to tear the envelope and risk damaging the letter inside. Whatever this letter held written on the pages I would keep it close for always. A tribute to the wife that I'd carelessly lost. I couldn't help but think if I hadn't ileft her she never would have returned to LA. Carrying that sort of guilt was overwhelming. In the back of my mind I knew what I was looking for was forgiveness for my most cardinal sin of leaving her. I wanted her words to tell me she forgave me. Maybe then I'd forgive myself.

 ** _Dear Dom,_**

 ** _First off you absolute dick!_**

My first reaction was to chuckle. Typical Let, she didn't know how to hold back. I could picture her writing this all fire and spite. Her eyes narrowed as she wrote the words. The one gripped tightly between her index and pointer finger as her silent anger and betrayal spilled from her mind onto the page in front of her.

 ** _You left me alone in the DR. You left me with the money stacked on the dresser like I was some sort of prostitute and not your wife. I thought we were ride or die. Then you left our necklace behind, the only symbol we have of our relationship. I understand why you left it, but why didn't you take it? I wear it every day as I know you would have. A tribute to the marriage which no one has any knowledge of, I can't tell Mia when you ain't around. God Dom, I thought we were beyond childish games and we no longer felt the need to run when things got real._**

As I read those word I could feel her silent heartbreak. I'd promised her I'd never leave her again. Yet we were married for a full day and I snuck out of our bedroom in the cover of night. My most cowardly act. I'd abandoned her with our necklace. I closed my eyes, I could still see her laying in the bed. Her eyes closed as she slept curled up in our bed. In the moonlight she looked at peace. In fact the only time I could ever really recall Letty at peace was in her sleep, when she wasn't reacting to the world around her but rather being one with it.

It touched me to know she wore the necklace every day. Her words without meaning to, twisted the knife that had been planted in my chest by her death. The griping pain intensified when I realised her loyalty to me had never wavered. Always loyal to a fault she wore the necklace. Her outward sign of our secret marriage. It was typically Letty to have an outward sign of an inward agreement. Something to say she'd always hinted at but never revealed. Always playing it close to the nest.

My eyes moved to her next paragraph. I made it halfway before pausing.

 ** _Anyway, there was nothing left in the DR for me without you. I couldn't be happy there without you. That's why I came back to 1327 again. I had to come back to somewhere familiar, the place I've called home for so long. That was before I realised a home isn't just a building, it's that feeling you get when you're with the person you care about most and you feel safe and protected._**

Her words held a ring of truth. Letty and I had always referred to 1327 as home. The place where we'd always belonged. In her time here she'd clearly had an epiphany. She didn't feel at home in LA without me. Her words shook me a little. Even though I constantly flung her into danger she felt safe with me. She felt protected. It was almost ironic that she felt safer with me than in 1327.

Since I'd returned I had felt a shift in 1327. It wasn't the home it always had been for me. It was half the place it once was without Letty. It wasn't the same without Letty coming and going at random hours and grumbling when we ran out of coffee. Even though I'd only walked through it twice, it didn't feel the same without Letty's presence to fill the narrow hallways and her voice to fill the silence. She had been right, home was when you were with the person you loved most and with her death I'd lost my home. She'd been my home when we had run from LA just under five years ago. She'd been my home even before that, when my Dad had died. For me home was wherever Letty was. Now she was somewhere I couldn't reach and while I lived on this earth it would be difficult to call another place home ever again.

 ** _Since I've been here, everything reminds me of you. From the wreck of your Charger that I'm rebuilding, to the streets of LA we loved to race around, to the car parking blocks where we hid out from the cops. Since I've come back to 1327, hardly a night has gone by when I've not dreamt of you, of the crazy times we've shared together. It hurts to recall the memories with such perfect clarity and not to be able to reach out and touch your face, feel you next to me, hear your voice._**

As I read her words I understood perfectly what she meant. Being back in LA was absurd. It brought things back to me I'd never realised I'd remembered. When I'd snuck into the city I had suddenly recalled the corners of it which we'd spent nights in hiding from cops. In my mind LA was so neatly tied up with Letty it was like a constant ache to be here without her. Since her death she had haunted my dreams, mostly because I imagined her in a moment of weakness reaching out for me before she died and I'd not been there for the woman I loved most. It hurt to know I'd never see her again.

 ** _My desire to be back with you again drove me to make my next decision. I got involved with Braga's cartel. Last night I ran for it and I won the race. I'm in. It's such a relief to write those words, to admit that's what I'm doing. I haven't told Mia and I never will. I'm acting as an informer for the FBI in exchange for the wiping of your record. I used Brian as my way in. Don't kill Brian if something happens to me, don't hurt him or go after him. If something happens remember that I didn't give my life for you to waste it rotting in prison._**

She'd written this letter a few weeks ago I thought as I read it. She had attempted to conceal it from Mia. On paper she'd committed what she planned to do. A risky thing but she had obviously felt safe writing it in a letter to me. The only thought that kept crossing my mind was that it could have been discovered had any of Braga's men checked up on Letty and found she spent so much time with the Charger and flipped through it looking for information about her.

One thing I had to constantly concede to Letty was her intelligence. She had returned to Brian and used what I assumed was his longstanding guilt against him. I'd seen Brian recently and knew he hated himself for what he'd done because as much as he tried to pretend he was more cop than criminal, Brian was really more bad guy than good guy. He just needed to realise it. A chuckle escaped me _**"Don't kill Brian if something happens to me, don't hurt him or go after him."**_ Even from her grave Letty was leaving orders. In a hateful moment of obedience and loyalty to the woman I loved most I knew that I'd never let myself hit Brian again. I couldn't go against her wishes. If she wanted to keep Brian safe she obviously believed the decision she had made to be hers and hers alone and I wouldn't disrespect her wishes.

The last sentence of that paragraph caught my eye. She didn't want me to waste my life in prison but what life was there for me without her? Without her spit fire personality there was a silence in my life. Sometimes I found myself waiting for her smart ass comment but when I glanced around to see her laughing face I never saw it. Other times I found myself rolling over at night and expecting to feel her lazing in the bed beside me but found nothing. Didn't she realise without her my life was merely going to be an existence. An existence that could have been played out in prison.

 ** _As I sit here, I know what I'm doing has two outcomes. Every odd is stacked against me but that just makes me more determined to survive, to come out of this fighting, alive. I'm going to put everything I've got into this and hope that my deepest wish comes true, to be reunited with you. I hope you never have to read this letter but if something happens and I do die, I want you to know that I did it for you, for us, and I'd never change it for the world. I'd never exchange any of the time we've shared together for the world._**

A tear rolled down my cheek. She had known what she was doing went against every shred of luck we had clung to over the years but she had done it anyway. Again the knife in my chest twisted. This was like rubbing salt in open wounds as my feelings of guilt intensified. Here it was on paper that she was doing it for me. I could never deny that and say she'd done it for uncharacteristically selfish reasons. Now there could never be any denying that she had done it for any other reason that for me because here it was before me in blue ink and white paper.

 ** _This letter which I hope you never have to read, brings me to the next point. I wanted to write this letter to tell you everything I found too difficult to tell you out loud. Ever since I've laid eyes on you I've had feelings for you, feelings which only grew stronger with time. You were my first crush, first real kiss and my first and only. Never did I imagine at ten years old we'd really ever be together but here we are fifteen years on and I still have feelings for you. I love you and I hate myself for never being able to say it back to you without sounding like I was choking. I love you Dom, for all that you are, all that you have been and all you're yet to be. I hate myself for never being able to tell you that in person but I promise if I bring down the cartel I'll try harder to tell you I love out loud instead of mumbling the words or saying, "I know." I promise I'll try to get better at telling you how I feel instead of bottling it up._**

I actually choked up a little reading those words from Letty. The words were uncharacteristically open and honest. They spoke of her true feelings. I had always known she had loved me but she rarely said it out loud. It wasn't her way. She must have known what this letter would mean to me if I ever got to read it. It was a reassurance that she had always loved me no matter what or who I was at the time. In a sense it made me love her more. In her weird sixth sense she'd known I'd need this letter more than anything to help me cope with her permanent absence.

 ** _Thank you Dom. Thank you for teaching me how to love without condition, with careless abandon. Thank you for showing me its okay to love someone so much that it physically hurts when you're apart. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever believe I'd get to have a fairytale romance, well I guess I never did but I know I got something better. I got our ride or die romance and I'd never ever give that experience up for the world. Until I met you, started loving you, I never knew I could give so much of myself to someone else but at the same time become so much more. Finally I know what it means to love someone as much as you love yourself. It means that you'd do anything for them and expect nothing in return. That's exactly how I feel about you. It don't matter if I never get anything in return because giving something for you is enough. There is no limit to what I'd do for you and there never will be._**

A few tears leaked from beneath my eyelids. Letty was thanking me for what I'd apparently done for her. How could she not realise that we had learned those things together? She had taught me how to love without condition, with Letty there was nothing she could do that would have made me love her less. She was just insanely perfect for me. Letty had her faults, bad tempered, quick with her fists, her act first think later attitude. Yet I going those things were pale in comparison with all her wonderful traits like her secretly big heart, how she thought the same way as me and how she understood me without words. Loving Letty had shown me it was possible to love someone more than yourself. When you loved someone like that you put them first always. That's what I'd done by leaving her in the DR. I'd thought I was putting her first and keeping her safe. Obviously I'd been wrong. I just didn't want her to waste her life in prison. Letty was better than that. Now she was gone and I could never get her back.

 ** _Letty Toretto_**

 ** _PS I love you Dominic Toretto, I'll always ride or die with you._**

I stared at the pages of her sloping writing and read it through twice more. Then I folded it back into its original folds so it wouldn't tear and I wouldn't lose any of it. I tucked the envelope into my pocket and patted it.

What did I do now? Without Letty there was a gap in my life that no one could fill. Now I needed to catch Fenix and Braga and make then pay for what they did to her. It was retribution in the Old Testament sense of the phrase, _"An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."_ What you take from another you return in kind. They had taken Letty's life so now they'd pay in kind with theirs.


End file.
